LibreWolf

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Welcome to the official community for LibreWolf.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. If you have any question please visit our FAQ first: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/

To learn more or to download the browser visit the website: https://librewolf.net/

If you want to contribute head over to our Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/librewolf

founded 4 years ago

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fishonthenet@lemmy.ml

why would my privacy settings mess with this? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/librewolf@lemmy.ml

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Transcript

Screenshot of a pop-up. It reads:

Color Inaccuracies Detected.

We have detected that your browser may have issues with color accuracy.

You may notice subtle visual noise and incorrect colors appear in your skins.

This issue is usually caused by anti-fingerprinting privacy settings in your browser.

Learn how to fix [with a hyperlink to a help page]

this screenshot was taken on Miners Need Cooler Shoes

does anyone know what would cause this precisely? why would anti-fingerprinting mess with the colors i use to edit an image in the browser?

i'd be tempted to brush this off as the website being malicious and lying to get me to deactivate fingerprinting protection, but the website is fully open-source and what they describe happened to me on Piskel (a pixel art editor, which would constantly mess up my colors in subtle but annoying ways)

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[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

fingerprinting mechanisms use pixel coloring to help fingerprint you. browsers have implementations that fuzz pixel colors to prevent this fingerprinting often in imperceptible manner. Think shifting pixel alpha values by a random +/- 0.3 values; range was arbitrarily chosen for demonstration purposes.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

as in, fingerprinting mechanisms use the colors that are in my OS’s color picker? or is it other colors?

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every computer will generate different colors due to driver/os/hardware differences when rendering anything. these differences are often imperceptible to the eye by easily grabbed via browser apis. by randomizing the results just a tad it defeats the trackers.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

oh i see, thank you!

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

np, i wouldnt worry about it for this website just leave your settings alone until you personally notice an issue. and even then...

[–] bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Colors are slightly different on different displays and OSes. The site is trying to fingerprint the system you are on to adjust the warmth level or something, but that is failing.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago

it is not affected by the display, and this does not mean it tries to fingerprint the user. it only just means that it uses the canvas API for whatever reasons

[–] lorty@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago

If you want to visualize it, this is a cool website to see it

[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ok, but how does changing the colour of pixels help identify me?

Is it for tracking the source of screenshots?

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

It's a two part process. One part happens on your machine. The browser is given a fingerprint to shift colors, and then the trackers can identify you even in a screenshot.